For TBC’s Video Mix series, our team of movie and TV experts makes recommendations so that you’re never stuck with a million streaming services and nothing to watch.
When there's white fluff gathering on the ground, there are few better feelings than pulling the curtains closed and spending a whole day in front of the TV, secretly enjoying the excuse to power down for a bit. There's no shame in leaning into the icy gloom, watching other people try to traverse situations and landscapes more treacherous than the ones outside the window. Below are a few excellent films that revel in the bleakness and the beauty of the snowy season.
The Great Silence (1968)
Sergio Corbucci’s nihilist Western features an ending so bleak and dire that one early screening of the film in Sicily reportedly ended when a frustrated audience member fired a gun at the cinema screen. Before the bloody denouement, The Great Silence is a tense document of slow-boiling rage and revenge, set in the days after a blizzard has blanketed a small town in Utah.
Where to Watch: Apple TV
My Night at Maud’s (1969)
Wracked by religious anxieties, the introverted engineer Jean-Louis spends a long night mulling his place in the world when a snowstorm prevents him from leaving the apartment of a new friend named Maud. Like the rest of Éric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales, My Night at Maud’s is a contemplation of life’s big questions—this time provoked by the experience of being stuck inside in the winter.
Where to Watch: Criterion Channel, HBO Max
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)
Robert Altman’s beloved snow Western is a tale of harshness of frontier—violence and power struggles disrupting the oasis that Warren Beatty’s McCabe has helped build in Washington State. Still, the warmth of the Leonard Cohen songs that populate the film and McCabe’s lush fur coats make this a surprisingly cozy watch.
Where to Watch: Apple TV
Encounters at the End of the World (2007)
Werner Herzog loves extremes. He’s spent time in volcanoes (Into the Inferno), on death row (Into the Abyss), and in the depths of a dank Peruvian jungle (Fitzcarraldo, and its Sisyphean making-of doc, Burden of Dreams). But Encounters at the End of the World may very well capture some of his most intense and strange subjects—the research scientists and divers who live and work in Antarctica.
Where to Watch: Apple TV
The Thing (1982)
Paranoia, panic, and fears about the extinction of the entire human race permeate this beloved horror classic. Set at an American research station in Antarctica, it captures the sinister edge of the coldest nights in a way that very few other films do.
Where to Watch: Apple TV
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